Pierce Nahigyan tells us why our government won't ratify the Convention on the Rights of Persons with Disabilities in 2009. Spoiler alert: opponents claim it'll subjugate American government to a world government, though the CRPD mainly extends American-style protections to the world and anyway these are the same idiots who have no trouble letting "free" trade agreements subjugate our laws to corporate power. Opponents also claim it'll be a backdoor way to codify abortion rights all over the planet. Myself, I'd prefer a world where citizens have to help each other avoid having abortions to a world where folks treat the disabled like junk.
Mark Boyd at the Center for Effective Government tells us how the Treasury Department could close one corporate tax loophole and save the American taxpayer $10 billion annually -- without Congressional involvement. At which point John Boehner will whine about not being consulted (though Congress has already empowered Treasury to do away with the loophole) and complain that closing the loophole will "kill jobs." Where is the enterprising journalist who will finally ask how, exactly, will stopping corporations from stacking their overseas profits in fictional overseas corporations "kill jobs"? Not in the "liberal" media, I'll bet.
Mike Konczal tells us, at some length, about "The Voluntarism Fantasy" -- no, not the "fantasy" that your individual acts of voluntarism make a difference, because they do, but the right-wing fantasy that our government can simply stop doing all the things it's supposed to do at our behest and on our behalf because volunteers will do it all. Spoiler alert: this wasn't how it was in the old days before alphabet agencies, either -- the "voluntary civil society" simply didn't have the means to provide the help our government can, and anyway, without massive taxation of high incomes, where's the incentive for the rich to participate in such a society?
Buncombe County, NC school asks 9-year-old to leave his My Little Pony backpack at home because it's a "trigger for bullying." Now that's the right message to send to our youth -- let the bullies win! Avoid provoking them! Haven't they learned, from watching our political class over the last few years, that there's no way to predict what will "provoke" a bully? Better to actually do their jobs and, you know, teach kids not to be bullies. I mean, do we put that many chemicals in our meat now that pre-teen kids muscle school teachers?
Ho hum, a Minnesota state Rep says a package of family leave/equal pay bills make women (not including herself, I presume) look like "whiners." No, politicians who complain about having to do right by their constituents look like whiners. Doesn't Ms. Kieffer know it's not nice to project?
Finally, yet another Republican politician thinks we shouldn't bother with laws prohibiting segregation, because a "KKK bakery" which refused to sell to black folks would be so unpopular it would close. Which, again, doesn't address another possibility -- that businesses will follow the lead of this imaginary KKK bakery until no business in town serves blacks. Which has happened, you know. Nor does this philosophical house of cards address consumers' right to shop at the place of their choice. Always, with these jerks, corporations have rights and people don't. Now let's never speak of this Phil Jensen fellow again.
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